The fate of Khalil Ahmad Jaber was indeed a tragic one. But the greater problem remains: the murderer remains unidentified. We have a mystery murderer. The people I questioned during the course of my investigation felt they could not identify the murderer. Some said they simply didn’t know. Anyway, had they known, they wouldn’t have told me, and had they told me, I wouldn’t have divulged anything. And even assuming I had - or could have done so-I certainly wouldn’t have dared to put it down in writing. But is that the problem? Is the identification of the murderer the problem? Would it help us understand the motives for the crime? I don’t think so. No. Even assuming the murderer was identified, and the motives of the crime were known, even if, finally, the murderer were put to death, it wouldn’t change anything. People say that putting murderers to death serves as a deterrent to others but, in reality, no one is being deterred. Murderers are executed and nothing changes. Take for example, the two men hanged for the murder of the Ibrahim family-a man, his wife, and their daughter - whose bodies were buried in a fallow field near the village of Maghdousheh.
